There can be various types of media, such as offline media and online media. One example of online media is Internet media, such as digital video, digital movies, digital photos, digital music, website content, social media updates, etc. Consumption time is the time one or more client devices (e.g., media player) spend consuming (e.g., playing) an online media item. Traditionally, consumption time has been measured based on small logging events, also known as “pings”, which are sent by the client devices to a server while an online media item is being consumed. Conventional solutions configure a client device to use a static schedule for sending an event log to the server at fixed times during the playback of the online media item. Generally, client devices that consume the same online media item (e.g., “Video-1”) use the same schedule. For example, all client devices may send the first three event logs based on a ten second interval and then send additional event logs based on a forty second interval. For example, Device-1 may be playing Video-1 and may send a first event log at ten seconds, a second event log at twenty seconds, a third event log at thirty seconds, and a fourth event log at seventy seconds. Device-1 may stop playing Video-1 at eighty seconds and may not send any other event logs to the server after the fourth event log. The server can use the event logs that are received from Device-1 to determine that Device-1 was playing Video-1 for at least seventy seconds.
Device-2 may also be playing Video-1 and may have also sent event logs to the server using the same schedule as Device-1, but may have stopped playing Video-1 at thirty-five seconds. The server may have received three event logs from Device-2. With conventional solutions, the server can determine that Device-2 played Video-1 for at least thirty seconds but less than seventy seconds, since the server did not receive an event log from Device-2 at seventy seconds. Traditional solutions tend to underestimate the actual consumption time for an online media item.